Ciconia Wiki:Manual of Style
The Manual of Style is a standard set of formatting guidelines for article writing and editing on the Ciconia wiki. It will include untagged spoilers for plot details in the story. Please see the Organization and Layouts article for specific article creation and writing details, as well as the Spoiler Policy on the wiki’s front page. Last updated: December 27, 2019 Writing Language This is an English language wiki, and as such all articles should be written in English. Furthermore, as all official English-translated materials are in American English, articles should follow American spelling conventions. Non-English words should only be used when relevant, such as for indicating the original Japanese word for a name or key term at the start of an article, or for names in the story that are based on a foreign language (at the top of the relevant articles only). Writing should be clear and concise, with proper spelling and grammar. Specialized jargon from outside the series should not be used unless necessary. If it is used, its meaning should be explained in a note. A lay reader with a standard grasp of the language should be able to understand all the content in the article. Articles should be written in the third person and use past tense. Extended plot summaries are the exception to this and should instead be written in the present tense from the perspective of unfolding story events. The use of parentheses or brackets should be minimized. Ampersands (&) and ellipses (…) should never be used in an article unless they are part of a quote. Translation Terminology used should be taken from the story itself and reflect the translation choices of officially localized materials. Translated terms and quotes should always be from the most recent official translation of visual novel. Only in the absence of an official translation (for example, for song lyrics) may an unofficial translation may be used, but it should be properly credited, even if it is your own translation. Objectivity Writing should be professional and maintain a neutral point of view. It should not contain value judgments, such as on the morality of a character or quality of an adaptation. Relevant value judgments originating from a character or Ryukishi07 may be included in an article, but it should be made clear who the value judgement is attributed to. If the reader reception is relevant to an article, it should contain citations to external reliable sources, such as a professional news or review site. Content Canon and Content Inclusion All articles should be based primarily on content from the visual novel. Interview answers may also be used to support statements when necessary. Fan-produced content such as fanfiction or memes should not be part of the wiki. They should not have articles, nor should they be referenced on existing articles, even in the Trivia section. Content on the wiki should have some degree of notability to the series. When adding a content, ask yourself if a general fan of the story might care for what you are planning to write. Specific information on what is considered notable may be found on the Organization and Layouts pages for each series. Spoilers While encyclopedic websites typically have an “open spoilers” policy, the nature of When They Cry titles as mysteries and the frequency of visits made by people who have not completed the story have led us to prefer a spoiler-sensitive formatting of articles. Spoiler tags should be applied to statements as per our Spoiler Policy as listed on the front page. That is, all content past the end of Phase 1 Chapter 7 should be spoiler tagged, with the exception of minor background information and details regarding names. The introduction of the article should be spoiler-free except when information critical to the article is considered a spoiler. Spoiler tags should be signposted—they should indicate what part of the story the tagged content is a spoiler for. Signposts should preferably be written in a way that does not break the follow of the article. For example, one may write “In Chapter 2: The Athletes Arrive, Spoiler text here” which will show up as "In Chapter 2: The Athletes Arrive, Spoiler text here". Spoiler tags should be used liberally for relevant content that is from another series (eg. Higurashi). Speculation While interpretation plays a major role in When They Cry titles, the purpose of a wiki is to compile verifiable information. As such, all articles should only be based on content as revealed in the visual novel, official side materials, and interviews. It should be possible to find a line in these official materials that directly supports any statement made about this. Information that is commonly accepted but is based on direct extrapolation from implicit information should be indicated as such through wording, with supporting evidence given alongside the statement or in a citation. Standardized Formatting Titles The first instance of an article’s title in the body of an article should be bolded and present in the first line of text. If this is a character name or key term, it should also contain the original Japanese and Romaji alongside it using the Nihongo template. Names Names of works and story arcs should be capitalized according to title capitalization conventions and italicized (eg. Ciconia no Naku Koro ni, For You, the Replaceable Ones). These should be spelt out in full when first written. Articles for the major When They Cry releases should have their opening sentence note that the “Naku” is officially stylized “Naku", but this stylization should not occur anywhere else on the wiki. Visual novel releases may be shortened to exclude the “no Naku Koro ni” part of the title in subsequent mentions. Names of arcs may be shortened to “first arc” or “Phase 1” (both unitalicized). Phase 1 (without the name or formatting) is the preferred way of referring to the first arc of the story Character names should only be written in full at the start of the relevant character’s article or when listing relationships; their first name alone should be used otherwise. The name order used in should always be the English name order (given name then family name). Referencing the Story At some points, it may be helpful to the reader to indicate which section of the story a statement is based on, such as when justifying statements about a character or signposting spoiler tags. Chapters of the visual novel are to be numbered and named according to the chapter selection screens. General Formatting In-universe terminology that are consistently capitalized in the script should similarly be capitalized on the wiki. This includes the terms Gauntlet, Gauntlet Knight, Rejection Shield etc. All romanizations of foreign language words other than names should be italicized, though these should occur only on rare relevant occasions. Large numbers should be written in numerals unless they are mostly made up of zeroes (eg. thousand, million). Any raw number less than 10 should be spelled out (i.e. two instead of 2) unless it is part of a date. Dates should be written in the “Month D, YYYY” format (eg. October 4, 1986). Article links should be applied to the first occurrence of the linked article’s name (or closely linked term) in an article. They should only be linked in subsequent mentions if a later section has the term as part of a larger group where others are linked. Articles should not be linked if the link would imply a spoiler contextually, such as when linking a character page on an article where the name is not yet known to refer to an actual story character. Pronouns The singular “they” pronoun should be used to refer to any character who is not gendered by the story. Miyao should be gendered with he/him pronouns on his page, while Meow should be gendered with she/her pronouns on her separate page. This also applies to characters whose gender may be known later in the story, but at the currently relevant point of the story have their identity or gender withheld from the reader. Media Requirements All media (videos, images, and music) that is used on the wiki should be of high quality, preferably of the original resolution of their source or a higher quality later official release. Media uploaded should be relevant to the wiki and in most cases should be from official material. Translated text in uploaded media should be of the latest official release when available. Fan-made media (when necessary) and real-life photographs should have permission from their creator or be under a free license, and attribution should be given in the image file description. Organization Media from the visual novel and its ports should retain their original filenames to make them easier to search for when referencing the script. Media from other sources (such as the official website) should be labelled as such, with additional search-relevant descriptors for the content. When additional information is necessary, this should be in the description of the uploaded file. If a file already exists but is misnamed, please notify the staff so that we can rename it instead of uploading a duplicate file by yourself. All non-visual novel assets should be placed into the relevant categories in the overall wiki organization. Character sprites, backgrounds, and CGs taken from the visual novel should be compiled in galleries on subpages of their respective articles. References Citation Requirements If information in an article does not come from the story content, it should be cited according to our citation style guide. Such information should come from a reliable source, such as an interview, a tweet from a relevant staff twitter account (07th Expansion, publishers, or translation teams), or a professional news website. For story content, evidence for a nontrivial claim should preferably be provided as part of the article itself. For example, a statement that a character behaves in a particular way towards another character may be followed by an example supporting this, along with the relevant story arc and chapter. Citations should only be used when this information does not flow naturally with the writing of the section. Any unofficial translation of content (interviews etc.) used on the wiki should be credited to the translator. This applies also to translations made by yourself. Credit should be given both at the start of the article or section and as a citation with an external link. An exception is made for the translation of short Japanese phrases such as game titles. Citation Style Articles on the wiki will use our own internal citation style. The evidence line may be omitted for story content citations if it can be deduced from context or if there are numerous lines supporting the claim in the chapter. It should be included if there is a layer of interpretation involved. Category:Wiki Policy